British actress Samantha Eggar, 86, died on Oct. 15 in Los Angeles. She started her career as a successful Shakespearean actress onstage, and by the early 1960s was working her way up as a starlet (most notably in Rob Roy and Dr. Crippen—in the last, as the killer’s accomplice, Ethel Le Neve). Eggar was discovered by William Wyler and cast as a kidnap victim in The Collector (1965), which earned her an Oscar nomination. She went on to appear in Psyche 59, the gawdawful Dr. Dolittle, Walk Don’t Run, The Molly Maguires, and The Walking Stick, but her red-hot vogue had passed by 1970. Still, Eggar worked steadily into the 2010s, appearing in a lot of American TV and a handful of films. She recalled of her first film, 1962’s Young and Willing, “it was all our first film—mine, Ian McShane, John Hurt—it was rather like going to college on the first day. ‘Don’t trip over these wires.’ ‘Oh. And these guys are called the 'grips'.’ ‘Please remember to shake hands with the director of photography before you go home at night.’ We were educated into the decorum of being on a film set. It was fun and just a grand experience. We were like puppies, really.” Eggar was married to actor Tom Stern; their children, Jenna Stern and Nicolas Stern, are an actress and producer, respectively.
